Reincarnated as Genghis Khan's Grandson, I Will Not Let It Fall-Chapter 39: The Far Bank

The column had held position for several days after the letter arrived.

The screen ran its route each morning and returned with nothing. The north bank of the river stayed empty. No riders appeared on the far side and no further message came from the south.

The camp did what a camp on flat open ground did when it held. It waited, and the waiting showed. Men moved through the daily functions at the pace of a held position.

Kirsa had been using the time. Each morning before the screen went out, he sent two or three of his riders south toward the river, different men each time, never the same pair on the same track.

They came back at different hours and reported to him. He compiled what they found.

When he had what he needed, he came to Batu’s tent before the horse lines had run their first allocation.

Batu told him to come back after the supply accounting.

Khulgen arrived first, before the morning had fully opened, with a felt folded under his arm. He sat and spread it on the table without preamble.

The ten-to-fourteen day window he’d named at their last meeting had been running. Much of it was gone. What remained put the resupply requirement closer than it had been.

The supply line had been running without incident. All three clans reported no unusual movement through Penk’s relay.

The resupply load would be moving north through territory where the seals were less than three weeks old, and a supply train at supply train pace was not a fighting formation.

He folded the felt and looked across the table at Batu. What the numbers pointed toward was evident without stating it.

"Get the allocation ready for movement," Batu said. "Don’t move it yet."

Khulgen went.

Kirsa came in almost immediately. He had his own document, larger and rougher, drawn in the field. He spread it on the table without asking.

"Two approaches within range of our current position," he said. "Eastern and western."

He covered the eastern route first.

Firm footing on the near bank for a hundred meters before the water, enough that the formation didn’t churn the near side on the way through.

The front was wide enough that the formation didn’t compress into a narrow file before entering the water. The river was shallower there and the current ran slowly.

For a force this size, the eastern route crossed faster.

The western route had softer footing on the north side, manageable for light riders and harder for a force this large.

The water was deeper and the current had more pull. It would cross, but slower, and the horses would feel it.

Batu looked at the document. "The south bank."

Kirsa put his finger on the western approach. "My riders watched both from the north side for several days.

The western side has a watch position on the far bank. Recent fire remains on the near side. Hoof marks on the south approach. Someone’s been sitting on that crossing."

He moved his finger east. "Older sign here. Less of it. The last clear observation was some time before we arrived."

The western approach was the one a column commander chose first when assessing the river from a distance. More visible near side, the obvious route from the camp’s perspective.

It was also the one Berke’s riders had been sitting on.

Batu said nothing. He looked at the document.

"How far between the two," he said.

Kirsa named the distance. Far enough to be genuinely separate, close enough that the march didn’t need to divide to reach either one.

Batu rolled the document and held it. He looked at Kirsa. Kirsa looked back without filling the silence.

They rode south together an hour later. The ground between the camp and the river was the same open steppe the column had been camped on, dry grass, hard soil, nothing on any flank.

From the forward observation point where Kirsa had been staging his reconnaissance, the river was different from what it had been on the horizon.

Up close the north bank rose slightly before dropping to the water. The current was visible from here, catching the low morning light along its surface, moving with a steadiness that the wider view had hidden.

Cold came off it. The near bank smelled of mud and wet grass in a way the open steppe behind them didn’t.

The far side was low and open. Grass started immediately from the water line and ran south into flat steppe that looked the same as the ground on the north side.

Same color, same length, same pale horizon beyond it. The letter had named a line. The ground didn’t show one.

The open terrain kept whatever Berke had on the south side.

A force held back from the water’s far edge by half a day’s ride could sit there undetected from the north side and be on the water in hours when the main body entered.

Kirsa stood beside his horse and said nothing. He had given his assessment.

The far side held his attention, the same watch he had been running since they stopped, checking that nothing had changed.

Kirsa’s scouts crossing first and reading the far bank before the main body entered the water was the only way to know what was waiting before fifteen thousand men were in the river.

Batu turned his horse north.

He found Torghul at the relay station in the middle of the afternoon, going through Penk’s timing tallies. Torghul looked up when Batu stopped in front of him.

"First light," Batu said. "The column crosses."

Torghul held that for a beat. "Which approach."

"Eastern."

A nod. He knew Kirsa’s auxiliary had been watching that ground since they stopped.

"Screen disposition."

"Kirsa goes first. His riders reads the far bank and signals before the main body enters the water."

Torghul was already turning toward the relay station to begin the preparation sequence. "It’ll be ready."

The camp had taken on a different quality through the hours that followed.

The maintenance rhythm of a held position replaced by something directed, each function pointed the same way.

The horse lines ran their allocations in a different order. The supply train reorganized on the eastern flank.

Penk’s relay riders moved between the mingans with a pace that said the timing signals had changed their content. Men checked equipment they’d already checked.

Batu stood at the southern edge of the camp as the light went level in the sky.

The river had gone dark with the rest of the horizon, the far bank lost in the general darkness of the south.

Somewhere out there, at the eastern crossing, the ground Kirsa had been watching since they stopped waited under the same dark.

Tomorrow it would be behind them.